No Longer Under Angels

As we saw in the previous Jacob account, angels stood between God and Man in the Old Creation.  Paul tells us that the Law was handed down by angels as well, and thus our no longer being under the law corresponds with our no longer being under angels.

Paul also mentions that we establish law and have the authority to judge the angels.  Because of this we are not to go to pagan courts, but rather the Church serves as the court.  Thus the new creation people of God are those who can hand down judgment.  They are the new angels handing down the new law.

All of this movement seems to be important for a proper eschatology, not to mention a proper understanding of the law’s role in that eschatology, and I am continually disappointed in how little work is done in the area of angels when commentators discuss the place of the law in the New Testament.  Other constructs are hauled in to help us understand the law, but almost always these constructs merely help us get away from the text.  Merit Pactums, suzerains, dialectics, and existential crises are all stimulating philosophical exercises, but they are just not what the text gives us.

The text gives us Jews, Gentiles, circumcisions, sabbaths, idols, meats, meals, and angels.

I haven’t unlocked all the secrets of the New Testament (yet ), but one thing is abundantly clear.  We are going to have to start dealing with the weirdness that the text sets before us.

IPO and Baptism in Leviticus 1

(Should I email this directly to Mark Horne first or just let him find it on his own?)

So says Calvin:

This, then, was the first rule of obedience, that men should not offer promiscuously this or that victim, but bulls or bull-calves of their herds, and male lambs or kids of their flocks. Freedom from blemish is required for two reasons; for, since the sacrifices were types of Christ, it behooved that in all of them should be represented that complete perfection of His whereby His heavenly Father was to be propitiated; and, secondly, the Israelites were reminded that all uncleanness was repudiated by God lest his service should be polluted by their impurity. But whilst God exhorted them to study true sincerity, so he abundantly taught them that unless they directed their faith to Christ, whatsoever came from them would be rejected; for neither would the purity of a brute animal have satisfied Him if it had not represented something better. In the second place, it is prescribed that whosoever presented a burnt-offering should lay his hand on its head, after he had come near the door of the tabernacle. This ceremony was not only a sign of consecration, but also of its being an atonement, since it was substituted for the man, as is expressed in the words of Moses, “And it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.” There is not, then, the least doubt but that they transferred their guilt and whatever penalties they had deserved to the victims, in order that they might be reconciled to God. Now, since this promise could not have been at all delusive, it must be concluded that in the ancient sacrifices there was a price of satisfaction which should release them from guilt and blame in the judgment of God; yet still not as though these brute animals availed in themselves unto expiation, except in so far as they were testimonies of the grace to be manifested by Christ. Thus the ancients were reconciled to God in a sacramental manner by the victims, just as we are now cleansed through baptism. Hence it follows that these symbols were useful only as they were exercises unto faith and repentance, so that the sinner might learn to fear God’s wrath, and to seek pardon in Christ.

Gnosticism and Judaizing

Peter Leithart makes some good connections:

One part of the connection of Judaizing and gnosticism appears to be this: God did indeed act through mediating beings under the old covenant. They delivered the law, and when Yahweh appeared in the OT, He appeared as an Angel. Judaizing is basically a denial of historical progress, an arrested adolescence that refuses to die to childhood and accept adulthood. Judaizers of the first century wanted to stay in the world of mediating angels; they didn’t want to grow into the awesome reality that God had come to humanity as a man.

This works well with one I tried to make a while back.

What Did the Jerusalem Council Decide?

A while back I pointed out some questions in the New Testament that at least give the need for new perspectives on Paul some plausibility. I also tried to point out some places in the Old Testament where Gentiles were not under the exact same law as Jews. Prompted by another discussion elsewhere, I think we can find something of interest in the ruling of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15.

The dispute was over this: “But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’”

Now let’s note that this question was cause for a council. It was not necessarily a “no brainer,” and we can notice that some Pharisees were present at the council with the rest of the Christians. It was these council participants who said “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” (5)

James gives the decisive answer to this, citing both Simeon (Simon?) and Amos 9. This reminds me of Peter’s (Simon/same guy?) citation of Joel 2:28-32 at Pentecost. The conclusion of the council, though, is that the Gentiles ought not to be “troubled,” but should simply abstain from things polluted by idols, from blood, from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality (vs 29).

The question that immediately arises is “Why just these four?” The idols and sexual immorality seem like obviously bad things, but why are blood and strangled foods worse than other violations of kosher law?

It seems that these four prohibitions correspond with the four laws in Leviticus 17-18 that include the “sojourners within Israel” as well as the children of Israel. There are commands, the next chapter in Leviticus for example, which mention only the congregation of the sons of Israel, and thus would not include the Gentiles. It seems that this is what the council at Jerusalem is doing. It is enforcing the proper interpretation of the Mosaic law, since of course, “from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

After AD 70 it would be pretty clear that the Mosaic era had come to a close, so these prohibitions would not have the same significance as they did in the 1st century. The fact that the council gave prohibitions at all is interesting though, and seems to be consistent with Paul’s willingness to circumcise Timothy, but not Titus. People often say that the problem was that circumcision was seen as meritorious, but I cannot see how one would argue that it was not being seen that way in Timothy’s case, especially given that Timothy’s circumcision comes right on the heels of the Jerusalem Council. Whatever the Pharisees had been proposing at Jerusalem certainly had to be on Paul and Timothy’s mind in the next chapter.

So if the Jews’ primary problem with the law was not merit, then what was it?

It was a failure to understand the specific place that the Mosaic law held in Redemptive history. Circumcision was not for everybody, and to assume that Gentiles would need circumcision is to miss the point that the law of Moses served a time-specific (and ethno-specific) function. As Peter said, a faithful Jew believed that he would “be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they [Gentiles] will.”

I suppose that merit could be an implication and a subset of this problem, indeed I would allow for that, but the primary emphasis that the New Testament brings out is eschatology and Christology. Now that Jesus has come, the saving grace is here. There’s no need to go backwards, and insisting that salvation comes through Moses is to do just that.

I’m sure our paradigms won’t allow this reading to come easily, but the Jerusalem Council’s resolution ends up being semi-Pelagianism if we don’t broaden our perspectives.

Jordan has more.